


Ulysses

by quiltedspacemittens



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Not spooky, Other, book canon and tv canon did the mash they did the monster mash, both holy water scenes, but actually canon convergence, but happier than 1862, happy ending if you squint, it was a graveyard smash, jack the ripper-era london, love is stored in the olecranon, rated g for gratuitous elbows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiltedspacemittens/pseuds/quiltedspacemittens
Summary: There are only two words printed there. Crowley’s blocky, rigid hand, staccato strokes. Holy water. To take arms against this sea of troubles, Jonah plunging into the winedark sea, into the belly of the whale.London, 1888. Crowley has just woken from a nine-decade nap, and needs a favor from Aziraphale.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	Ulysses

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Racket's 13 days of Halloween, for the prompt "bone." 
> 
> While the story is set against the backdrop of the Jack the Ripper murders, they are only talked about in general terms by the characters. No details about the actual events are mentioned. A CW as well for typical holy water content, but there is no suicidal ideation beyond the lines from the show.
> 
> And a brief disclaimer: Corsets for everyday wear were breathable and allowed for a wide range of motion. Crowley dislikes corsets because she's a snake with anxiety and her opinions are not representative of period humans.

Soho, London

30 September, 1888

Aziraphale opens the bookshop door cautiously, keeping behind it like a shield, a safeguard. She stops halfway, gapes at Crowley. It is precisely one in the morning. The church bells ring the hour, calling to each other, Anne and Clement and Mary and Sepulchre. One single toll rippling across the city. Aziraphale and Crowley both jolt. 

Aziraphale gathers herself first, stepping out from behind the door as the echo of the bells fades into the fog. She looks Crowley up and down as if for injuries. “Are you safe?” she whispers immediately, eyes wide. Brusque and clinical on the doorstep, quashing down the flintsparks of curiosity Crowley knows are rising up her chest. She’s wearing a big skirt, pale and lacy. Crowley recognizes the style from the fashion plates she’d looked over earlier, interspersed with the nine decades of newspapers she’d woken up to. Aziraphale’s boots just kiss the raised threshold, toes pointed arrow-straight. Crowley can see the embroidered heartsease, indigo and violet, dark thread against the cream suede. Their eyes meet, Crowley’s shuddered by her glasses, Aziraphale’s unencumbered. Twin moons, grey and cratered. She averts her gaze instantly, eyes darting past Crowley’s shoulder, fearful and searching. The bookshop is hardly lit, the shelves looming, dark, jagged sentries in the shadows. A lantern dissipates the dim somewhere in the back.

Crowley nods curtly in response to Aziraphale’s question and Aziraphale sweeps back to let Crowley enter. She’s clutching a straw hat at her side, unseasonable with its baby blue ribbon, as if she were prepared to flee into the labyrinthine alleyways of Soho, abandon the bookshop and all its ghosts and treasures.

“Please, come in." Her voice is low and urgent, nearly hissing on the sibilant. Crowley steps over the threshold, out of the way of Aziraphale muscling the door closed, fumbling with the locks.

Crowley has not been in the bookshop for nearly a century, since its first opening. It doesn’t look different, though it is perhaps fuller. Very unsystematically stacked shelves, haphazard and precarious, scrolls and codices propped against each other. Vibrant Persian rugs, too many of them, soft and lush, the color of winestains.

Aziraphale hangs the hat on a wrought-iron coat rack. A new addition, thin and sharp in all the ways the bookshop is not. They do not touch each other, Crowley does not rip off her gloves and throw her arms around Aziraphale, bury her face in her neck. She doesn’t lift Aziraphale’s soft hand to her lips, press kisses to each of her knuckles. Instead, she clenches her black-leather hand into a fist, and follows Aziraphale to the backroom silently. Aziraphale, clumsy in the dark, dashes her foot against a stack of books, disjointed, uneven, a pile of corners rising craggy from the hardwood floor. The noise startles them both, and Crowley grabs Aziraphale’s elbow. Instinctively almost. _Don’t fall._ They stand shakily for a moment. Crowley reminds herself there are layers between them, their corporations, the leather of her gloves, and the human-spun fabrics Aziraphale is wearing. Their essences separated, on opposite sides of so many barriers.

“Here.” Crowley steps forward, voice cracking. “I’ll lead the way.” Crowley’s eyes are better in the dark, made to see in the shadows. They are day and night, the pair of them, meant to slide past each other, only glimpsing the other in the brief dawns and dusks of the world. Nocturnal and diurnal, the globe rotating, creaking in and out of the shadows, turned on a spit. A music box winding down, the bright, sweet music becoming sad and slow.

Crowley softens her grip on Aziraphale’s arm, the layers of cloth and skin and flesh dulling down the bone of her elbow. Crowley’s palm cupping it. She steers them towards the lantern light in the backroom, wishing wildly that she could belong like this, holding Aziraphale in the palm of her hand. Their skin grazing in brief instances, no jumping away, no enforced separation, no diametrically opposed chairs when they are drinking, when the housecoat comes off, the stays loosened.

Sometimes, she would find Aziraphale’s hairs on her clothing. So white that it is nearly colorless, curled and crimped, snake-like on her overcoat. Burnt it off. Aziraphale must have had the same experiences, the streak of red lingering on the couch, hanging off a teacup, matted on the carpet. Smote it out of existence, probably.

In the light, Aziraphale straightens her arm, pushing it down and dislodging Crowley’s hand. She steps away from her, towards her desk, clears her throat but doesn’t speak.

Crowley takes it upon herself to fill the silence as it stretches taut in front of them. “Erm, how’ve you been?”

Aziraphale turns her attention to the windows, fussing with the curtains, perfecting the spacing between each ring. “Fine, thank you.” She doesn’t return the question, keeps her back to Crowley.

Crowley shifts from foot to foot, dress rustling. She knows how she must look, grotesque, an effigy of modernity. Skeletal, sunken and skinny and hollow. An ill-fitting dress, too dark, too new, too many buttons and clasps and bells and whistles. Lace and ruffles and pleats strung into a complicated tangle.

“Red or white?” Aziraphale asks eventually, her tone light and detached.

Crowley casts her gaze around the room to see what Aziraphale was drinking before she arrived. There’s no glass, not on the desk, or next to Aziraphale’s workbasket, or perched improbably on the arm of the sofa. “Whatever you’re having,” she says uncertainly. Desperate to please Aziraphale, appease her, diminish the years they spent apart. As if her choice in wine could fix everything.

Aziraphale prefers reds, Crowley knows. It had been a recurring nightmare of hers, while she was asleep. Cabernet splattering Aziraphale’s white dress, the tip of her nose, her collar. Irreparably damaging the lace. Crowley had known, even in her sleep, the stains were her fault, had known that no amount of frantic laundering could save them, no sunny day could bleach them enough, no lye soap sufficiently harsh on the delicate fabric.

Sure enough, Aziraphale returns with two glasses of red, waving Crowley to sit on the sofa while she sits at the desk chair. She places hers on the dark wood of the desk, doesn’t sip from it.

Crowley pauses. “Aziraphale?” Her voice is tentative, quavering between them, the air thick and syrupy, each sound slow as molasses. As if they need an intermediary, a telegraph operator, a grubby boy on the street, carrying messages between them.

Aziraphale sniffs, after a moment. Crowley’s eyes dart back to her, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed against the right side of her chair. Despite her flawless posture, she’s trembling.

“What is it?” Crowley asks, alarmed, half-rising off the sofa.

“Where did you go, Crowley? I thought you were dead.” Aziraphale bursts out, all in one breath. “I thought you’d been discorporated, were trapped in Hell without a body and I thought you were never coming back.”

“Angel, no, I-“

"Do you know, Crowley, how much I worried for you? How I looked for you in every city in Europe, as if you’d be in Frankfurt or Leipzig, or God forbid, Paris. And now there’s a _murderer_ on the loose, and conveniently you waltz into my shop, risen from the dead. Really, Crowley!” Aziraphale reaches under the chair and pulls out her workbasket in a huff.

“The Whitechapel murders? You think I’m involved in _those_?” Crowley scrubs at her face. She hadn’t anticipated confronting morality this quickly. “Angel, I was sleeping.”

“Quite the nap.” Aziraphale flips open her sewing box and extracts a needle with precision.

“Yeah, it was,” Crowley grits out. “Thought it all might go pear-shaped, didn’t want to witness it.”

“Really.” The needle flashes in the candlelight. “And now you’re awake.”

“Hell sent me a commendation, nearly bit my nose off.”

“A commendation,” Aziraphale repeats, flat and incredulous, resignation underneath.

Crowley scowls, embarrassed and apologetic. “Something about the nemesis of neglect and oppression of the working class in the industrialized factory system.”

Aziraphale selects a spool of thread, runs her fingers over it like it is something priceless, precious. Like it is a full-grown tapestry, not just spare to fill out the heel of a sock. “Oh, Crowley. The children.” Aziraphale’s eyes are filled with tears, as she cannot thread her needle, trying and again and again, finally dropping it in frustration.

“Angel, let me.” Crowley crosses to Aziraphale, picks up the needle from where it rests on her apron, fits the string through the eye in one practiced go.

She pulls her hands back, clutches them against her sides to keep from taking Aziraphale’s face in them, from climbing into her lap, needles be damned, and refusing to move. Aziraphale doesn’t thank her, just looks at Crowley wide-eyed, with something like gratitude and something like understanding. Crowley fears in that moment that Aziraphale’s flickering expression will haunt her dreams for the rest of time.

She loses her nerve. There had been a purpose in coming here, beyond informing Aziraphale that she was conscious once more. Maybe it had all been a mistake. “I should go,” she mumbles, flexing her wrist. “You shouldn’t have to play hostess to me. It’s too risky.”

“What? No, absolutely not,” Aziraphale says sharply, dropping the length of thread she’d been measuring out. “You can’t go out there _alone_. Especially not dressed like that.”

There is a silence then, awkward and palpable. The two of them in dresses, ringlet curls in their hair, high boots, smooth faces. The same twisted backwater in both their minds. Pity, sympathy maybe. A strong urge to protect all they can, no safety outside the toppled garden walls. Banished children of Eve.

“Alright,” Crowley says hesitantly, still unmoving.

“Sit down. Drink your wine.” Aziraphale picks up her darning again.

Crowley obeys. She watches as Aziraphale weaves the thread through the heel of the sock, over and over, brows knitted in concentration. The needle is long and silver, glinting in the candlelight.

Crowley shifts uncomfortably, attempting her habitual sprawl, but her corset forces her into a posture that’s too upright, too confining. Her heart beats against it, silk and whale bone, wrapped around her like a rib around a lung. “I need a favor.” Aziraphale purses her lips, displeased, but Crowley continues, “For if it all goes wrong. I need insurance.”

“What?” Aziraphale asks distractedly, still absorbed in the heel of the sock she is inexpertly darning.

Crowley tugs a small, folded piece of paper from her sleeve. It catches on the buttoned cuff, crinkles against her wrist. “I wrote it down. Walls have ears.”

She stands to hand it across. Ten feet across the room, this hardwood no-mans-land between them. Held between her first two fingers. Aziraphale pinches it between her finger and thumb. Millimeters apart. Oils from their skin seeping into the paper. She unfolds it, opening it like a book, holding it with the same care.

There are only two words printed there. Crowley’s blocky, rigid hand, staccato strokes. _Holy water_. To take arms against this sea of troubles, Jonah plunging into the winedark sea, into the belly of the whale.

“Out of the question.” Aziraphale’s voice is low, pitched dangerously, still soft.

“Why not?” Crowley asks, chin in the air, breath ragged in her ears. The ribs in her stays, in her bustle, wrapped around her lungs. Bathtubs of air, she can’t grab onto any of it. She forces the words out anyway. Defiant, petulant, questioning.

“It would destroy you.” Aziraphale is visibly shaken, shoving the paper at Crowley, with a ferocity disguised by the evenness in her voice. “I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley.”

Crowley refuses to take back the paper. “That’s not what I want it for. Just insurance.” She hadn’t expected Aziraphale to deny her outright, never expected her to shoulder responsibility, to question the consequences.

“I’m not an idiot, Crowley.” She’s pleading, eyes wide and hands agitated. “Do you know what trouble I’d be in if they knew I’d been fraternizing? It’s completely out of the question.”

“Fraternizing?” Crowley growls. A drumbeat in her ears, blood pounding, a tell-tale heart under the floorboards. Out of the question, to be or not to be. This great storm that has come upon you because of me.

“I think you should go upstairs.” Aziraphale yanks the needle though the stocking, burgundy thread swooping. “You can leave at first light.” Voice cold and flinty, brooking no argument.

Crowley opens and closes her mouth, grimaces, fish-like. She gives up. Rises on unsteady legs, twists up that spiral staircase, the compass stenciling jeering her. True north. Magnetic needle ticking, always snapping back to this one pole of solidity, under the spinning of the Earth. A center point, red needle, silver needle. Sharp edges forever in opposite directions.

***

She doesn’t sleep. Rips off her layers, bodice and corset and bustle, flops on Aziraphale’s unused four-poster. There were dreams, while she slept before. Year-long visions, her hand in Aziraphale’s, squeezing, holding tight. The two of them bound there, vacuum between their two hands, no power could separate them. Skin to skin, pressed, cells flaking off, interspersing on sweaty palms. Doesn’t matter. Crowley would take all of it. Clammy hands, dewy perspiration, transferred ink stains, righteousness. All of it.

She has ruminated on it for ages. Why can’t she touch Aziraphale? What is the force that stops her, that burns her back every time? She wouldn’t mind it, but for Aziraphale’s pinked skin, fingertips singed, reminding her of hellfire and sulfur, of the power to harm that bubbles under both their skins. What makes them angel and demon? What parts of her could she replace, boards on the ship of Theseus, to become acceptable? Her skin could flake away, she could pull ribs from her chest, mold something better. Unless they are angel and demon in those skin cells, in the marrow of their bones, in their very atoms, in carbon and oxygen and the earthy, lingering scent of Aziraphale’s ambergris.

The human skin regenerates itself every seven years. They are all ships of Theseus, God’s thought experiment come to life on the dark side of the universe. Crowley is chasing a single drop of water across the seven seas, and she cannot make this vessel seaworthy. Cannot point the compass true north, align herself to that silver needle and sail home.

The stairs creak and Crowley jerks in surprise. Aziraphale hovers in the doorway, spectral in white, framed against the dark innards of the shop, black-resined walnut. She fidgets, eventually sitting down on the edge of the bed, back to Crowley.

“I’m afraid.” Aziraphale’s voice is a wrecked thing, all the steel gone out of it. A needle, thin and small, rattling uncertainly inside the compass.

Crowley doesn’t move, breath stopping.

“I thought my nerves would settle when you woke up,” she continues, still tremulous. “But you, you’re-”

She trails off, and there’s a finality then, the end of the confession, given behind this screen. It is Crowley’s turn now. To reach out her hand and give absolution.

The room is heavy and quiet, as Crowley tries to snap words from the firmament as easily as petticoats. The restless street murmurs on, oblivious to the suffocating silence hovering just above it. A burst of wind against the windows, rattling the panes. Stray dogs scrapping in the alleyway. A meat cart, the clop-clop of hooves, a steady tattoo against the cobblestones (fraternizing, fraternizing).

“I’m sorry,” Crowley whispers, facing away from Aziraphale. “You’re right. Downstairs, everything.”

Aziraphale doesn’t respond, but Crowley hears her skirts shifting, feels a light pressure at her back. Aziraphale’s hand, fingers splayed, pressing carefully against her shift, feeling the give of her skin beneath it. Breaching the screen between them, the heavy curtains, hauled open to reveal the stage set. Rendezvouses in St. James Park, coming from opposite directions, stage left and stage right. A chattering ensemble, snippets of French. Learn it by rote, practice the blocking, rehearse in full costume. Don’t talk about the Scottish play (she prefers the funny ones). Break a leg. Set the bone, a tourniquet. It will heal, reform, new cells, new life, a new plank on the side of this ship, bobbing forever in the harbor.

“You need,” Aziraphale breathes, her palm against Crowley’s back. Consecrated hands on her vertebrae, that serpentine spinal column, that Tower of Babel. “Insurance?”

“I do.” Barely a murmur.

“I can’t have you risking your life.”

“Course not.”

Aziraphale’s hand flexes on Crowley’s back, then is gone. Absolution. “I’ll go to the pump once it’s light.” She rolls over and the moment breaks, the surface tension punctured.

 _I can’t have you risking your life._ She remembers then that Aziraphale was created to be a protector, a guardian. How easily she’d extended that role to Crowley, from that very first rain. How easily she had opened herself to Crowley, even now, giving her shelter from the fearful world outside.

“Suppose I should say thank you.” Holy water. Sprinkled onto all the faithful, hyssop sprig casting droplets in an arc. _Do you renounce Satan and all his evil works?_

“Better not.” _And all his empty promises?_

Crowley rolls over. They lie next to each other, hands folded across their chests. Their elbows touch, barely, the fabric of their shifts kissing. Linen and wool. Aziraphale pushes closer, until their shoulders bump, tilts her head against Crowley’s scapula. Her ear pressed against the thin cloth covering it. Fraternizing.

**Author's Note:**

> Whitechapel and Soho were somewhat demographically similar in the 1880s, even though they were on opposite sides of London. They were both poor, crowded, and had large communities of sex workers, who were Jack the Ripper's victims. If you're interested, check out Charles Booth's poverty map (1889, 1891) [here.](https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/14/-0.1174/51.5064/100/0)  
> I would highly recommend [the olecranon wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olecranon) if you would like to be greeted by a nifty skeleton.  
> Thanks for reading! Find me on [tumblr.](https://theseedsofdoom.tumblr.com)


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